Constructing Our World
Aquinas On Gender Construction? is the provoking title of one of the episodes of New Polity’s fascinating series on gender. Spoiler alert—they argue that gender is more than just our biology and that in some ways, though not all, it is constructed. The hosts, Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell, argue that God has placed us into a world with certain givens that are fixed but that insofar as we are made in the image of God as Creator, we are called to be “world-builders.”
In this capacity, we are like artists who can’t just create anything they want but rather work within the constraints of their given medium. There are many ways a sculptor can make a beautiful statue but if he chooses to work with stone, there is a range of what he can and cannot do. Our limitations as world-builders are things like the eternal law of God’s Providence, the natural law of morality written on our hearts, and the physical laws of creation, such as the law of gravity. Working within these there are innumerable ways that a culture can rightly embody male and female roles. What it meant to be a man or a woman in medieval France was different from what it was in pre-modern Japan, but both could be true instantiations of masculinity and femininity.
Although this meditation is on gender in particular, I want to draw your attention to your power as a world-builder more generally. This week, I invite you to consider:
How do I speak to myself? What does my inner dialogue tend to be about? What is its tone and texture? How might these shape how I see the world? How might this way of seeing the world influence how I act in it?
What do I tend to talk about with others? What is my voice and demeanor like? How might these things shape how they see and act towards me?
What is my physical environment like? How might the surroundings I’ve created for myself shape how I see the world and how I act in it?
What are my relationships like? How might they influence how I see the world and how I act in it?
What actions fill my days? How might these shape how I see the world and how I act in it?
God bless,
Dan
